As a public librarian with some knowledge of the academic librarian world, it hasn’t been my observation that we as a group have the same amount, much less more time off or training funds available as our academic or special librarian counterparts have. At least this is not in the case in the dozens of “small” (serving populations less than 50,000) libraries in my area, in which we are struggling to cover the days, nights, and weekends to serve our patrons.

Public libraries are the peoples’ libraries. We serve every age from 0-100+, we serve every economic level from the poorest to the wealthiest, we serve you whether you go to the local public school or the local private academy, we serve you no matter where you work, we serve you whether you could afford to go on to higher education or not. So we have become the “default” library type associated with many discussions. Though were are closely associated with our cities and/or counties, we probably have more in common with each other than librarians closely allied with a particular school or business. But I agree completely that at the heart of it, we as a profession have more commonalities than differences.

(Hope this ends up a coherent post – had to write it at the reference desk and was interrupted multiple times!)